Your Vision Should Include BHAGs: Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Success Tweet: Your vision should be a BHAG: a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Make it something really worth accomplishing. Let's back up for a second and talk about the difference between your personal mission and personal vision.

Your mission is your reason for existing, your passion, why you are on this earth. As I've said, my mission is to help others achieve the life and career success they want and deserve. Your mission is your purpose in life. Once you settle on a personal mission, you should think very long and hard before you change it. Your personal vision is the direction in which you are going in the short to medium term – usually the next three to five years. Unlike your mission, your vision should change with the times. It should be consistent with your mission, but should reflect the new goals you set for yourself as you move forward in your life and achieve some measure of career success. As the tweet says, your vision should always be a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal. You need to create a vision that will challenge you and motivate you – it should be big and hairy and audacious. What's your big hairy audacious goal for the next year? Three years? Five years? Ten years? I like the word “audacious" in the BHAG idea. According to Dictionary.com, audacious is defined as: “extremely bold and daring, brave, fearless, original, without restriction to prior ideas, highly inventive, unrestrained, uninhibited, bold in defiance of convention." Do these words inspire you or frighten you? I hope they inspire you to be bold and daring, fearless and original when it comes to creating your personal vision. Don't be constrained by convention, or restricted by prior ideas. Be highly inventive.

An Example Of One Of My Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs)

I've shared my current vision in a previous article. It comes in a one year and a five year time frame:

• Create a profitable internet business that will allow me to share my optimistic message on career and life success and help as many people as I can.
• Make 100% of my income from the internet by 2015.

This vision is a BHAG for me; it's audacious. I'm on a steep learning curve when it comes to internet marketing. Accomplishing my personal vision is going to take more than a little luck -- and a lot of persistence. But that's OK – I realize my vision is a BHAG, and I'm willing to take the risk of stating it in public and committing to doing the work to make it a reality. I'm choosing to be bold and daring as I enter the next phase of my life. So what does this mean for you? It means you too should be bold and daring as you create your personal vision. Don't be constrained by convention; see yourself as an audacious success three to five years in the future. That's how you become a career success. Your mindset makes all the difference. You need to be willing to commit to doing things differently. As the saying goes, you need to be willing to give up what you are for what you can become. The first step in creating a personal vision that is a BHAG is to determine your goal for the time frame you choose. As you see, I've created a one year and five year goal. Your goal should be very focused. It should be difficult to achieve – or it's not a BHAG. Your personal vision should stretch you past your comfort zone. It should be life changing. It should build on the momentum you have going. It should excite and stimulate you. It should be something that is really worth accomplishing. The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people clarify their purpose and direction in life. Your purpose is your personal mission. Your direction is your personal vision – what you will accomplish in the next three to five years. As this tweet says, “Your vision should be a BHAG; a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Make it something that is really worth accomplishing." Your personal vision should be bold and daring, original, not restricted by your past way of thinking, highly inventive, unrestrained and uninhibited. In short – think big, think outside the box, think about what you can become, not what you are today. Read more » articles by this approved expert.